I QUADRI DI IOLAS

Room 6

« I believe that few Italian artists bear the stigmata of the “modern artist” like Giovanni Testori. His fatal need to go further and further, farther and farther away, where no one can stay with him: his desperate desire to know sin, damnation, remorse and delirium; and his cold will to construct for himself, day by day, hour by hour, book by book, a tragic destiny, what could be more modern than this? Faced with a will like his, each of us wonders how long they can resist, without giving in or breaking. For my part, I must confess to an admiring aversion. Even if it is naive to write this, I wish that so many energies unleashed to break every limit would gather within the limits that are granted to us. But what is Testori looking for behind the form? Although it seems almost impious to speak of it, he seeks God, whose true name escapes art, as it does every philosophy; and absolute sin, evil without remedy, which are equally unrepresentable with words and their human colours.»
Pietro Citati, 1974

In 1974, Testori exhibited at the Galleria Iolas in Milan, run by Alexander Iolas, the great international dealer of Greek origin. He switched from oil to acrylic: in a series of almost monochrome paintings, the material becomes less jagged. The large female figures, on the verge of being swallowed up by the white background, release their strength in the vitality of the blood.